Template talk:Maryland county seats

Baltimore?

How is Baltimore a "county seat"? It's not part of a county... --Jfruh (talk) 16:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

From my understanding, although Baltimore is an independent city, Baltimore is recognized on the same level as a Maryland county for administrative purposes. The article for Baltimore itself also mentions this. That's why I distinguished "Baltimore City" to clearly indicate its status.

Addendum to earlier reply: Here's how the State of Maryland lists "Baltimore City" on its Local governments: Counties page.

Taken from the text on this same page: "Twenty-three counties and Baltimore City make up the twenty-four main local jurisdictions found in Maryland. Baltimore City, although a municipality, has been considered on a par with county jurisdictions since the adoption of the Maryland Constitution of 1851." →Lwalt ^♦ talk 20:01, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

While it's true that it's "on par" with county jurisdictions, it's not the same thing as a county jurisdiction -- the relationship between Baltimore City and the state government is different from the relationship between the counties and the state government. (I'd have to look it up, but I think that the city government has less freedom to act without state approval than county governments in some areas.) Plus, because Baltimore is a single jurisdiction, it doesn't have a "seat" per se. I can understand the motivation for putting it on this template, but I think it's misleading to call it a county seat (it's not) and not distinguish it from the other counties, since it's not a county. --Jfruh (talk) 20:09, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I know that there's a distinction between a city/municipality and a county in the general sense. I was only pointing to how Maryland treats Baltimore City. I've not come up another way to include Baltimore City on the template other than what it is...a city, like the ones actually designated as the county seats. Anyway, it would seem rather odd, given the status of Baltimore to ignore it altogether, given its significance in the State of Maryland.

If I had created a separate category called "Independent City," the category would seem redundant since a "Cities" category is already included on the template -- not to mention that the inclusion of an Independent City category alters the naming convention for the template. I know that the Commonwealth of Virginia also has this issue with several of its cities in NOVA (e.g., Alexandria, VA, an independent city like Baltimore, is also not a city that's located within a county). I'll take a look at the Virginia templates to determine see how this issue was handled, if at all. →Lwalt ^♦ talk 21:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I like how you changed it. I'm just going to change the link to go directly to independent city, since there's a Wikiepdia article for that. --Jfruh (talk) 02:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks...I'm glad that this change eliminates the confusion with Baltimore City. "Independent municipality" (without repeating the word "City") was the only other way to handle Baltimore without ignoring the city altogether, esp. because of its prominence in Maryland. →Lwalt ^♦ talk 05:03, 4 August 2007 (UTC)